Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(80)

Deese and Cole squatted behind a shrub across the street from Harrelson’s house, which was dark except for one yellow-bulbed lantern by the front door. When Deese tried to brush the shrub a bit to the side, he got a handful of thorns and spent the next two minutes pulling them out of his palm and cursing in a stage whisper.

Those two minutes were well used, it turns out, as they scanned the street for trouble. Cox called, “Harrelson just went past, two people in the car . . . He’s turning into the gate right now . . . He’s inside the gate.”

“Go,” Cole said. “Walk, don’t run.”

They walked across the street, up to Harrelson’s garage, then around the corner and behind another shrub that matched exactly the one they’d left the moment before.

Cole asked, “Ready? Got your table leg?”

“Yeah, yeah, if you got your gun. This mask keeps sticking to my tongue.”

“Quiet. This is them.”


LIGHTS ON the street now, a car moving slowly. Then the garage door’s lifting mechanism engaging, the overhead light coming on, the door starting up. Cole said, “Not until you hear the garage door starting to come down or a car door slam. We don’t want him inside the truck with his keys. Step high when you cross into the garage, you don’t want to trigger the safety laser beam and reverse the door, getting it going back up again.”

“I got it, I got it, you told me a million times.”

The Yellow Cab Porsche was at the curb, then in the driveway, pausing to let the garage door go all the way up and disappear. A second later, the door started down again, and Cole said, “Go!”

They scrambled around the prickly shrub and the corner of the garage, high-stepped over the beam, and stooped behind a black Lexus sedan. The Porsche was on the other side of the sedan, and, beyond that, behind the single-bay garage door, was a tan Jeep Sahara. A door slammed on the Porsche, then another, and as Cole and Deese peered through the back window of the Lexus, and out the other side, they saw the short, pumpkin-headed man walk between the Lexus and the Porsche and turn away from them, toward the door to the interior of the house.

Cole said, “Now,” and stood and stepped around the end of the Lexus behind Pumpkin Head, who didn’t see him, and then Harrelson emerged from behind the Porsche, and he did see him and tried to reverse his course but Cole pointed his gun at Harrelson’s head and screamed, “Freeze! Freeze or I’ll kill you, motherfucker.”

Pumpkin Head lurched, surprised and in shock, and turned. Deese, coming up behind and to the side of Cole, hit him on the forehead with the table leg with a resounding crack that sounded like a dead branch being broken.

Cole said, “Jesus,” as Pumpkin Head went down flat but somehow kept the muzzle of his weapon on Harrelson. “On the wall, on the wall, motherfucker. Put your hands up on the wall. Put them up.”

Pumpkin Head struggled to his hands and knees, groaning—“Ow! Ow! Ow!”—and Deese kicked him in the ribs. And when Pumpkin Head went down again, Deese stepped over his body and said to Harrelson, “Don’t make me beat you to death. Open the fuckin’ trunk on the Porsche.”

Harrelson, red-faced and angry, but not obviously frightened, said, “I gotta get my keys outta my pocket. We’re not gonna fight you. And don’t hurt Dopey no more.”

“I’ll fuckin’ kill him if I fuckin’ feel like it, fuckin’ Dopey,” Deese said.

Harrelson took a key fob out of his pocket, pushed a button, and the back hatch of the Porsche opened up to reveal a set of golf clubs and a gym bag. The bag was full of golf shirts, two pair of golf shoes, and a plastic bag full of dirty shirts. Deese pulled up the floor mat: nothing there but a spare tire and tools.

“I’m gonna ask you only once,” Deese said. “Where’s the money?”

Dopey/Pumpkin Head was still on the floor, still groaning, but now it was “Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh!” Deese kicked him again and he yelped, and Harrelson said, “I’ve got a roll in my pocket, and Dopey has a thousand, probably.”

Deese lashed out with the table leg and hit Harrelson on the side of the face, opening a gash across his cheekbone and knocking him against the garage wall and then down on his butt. A rake hanging on the wall fell on top of him.

Deese said, “Get the fuck up or I’ll break your fuckin’ kneecaps.”

Cole said, “Easy, we don’t want to kill him. We won’t get the money if we kill him.”

“I’m not gonna kill him, but if he doesn’t tell me about the money I’m gonna cripple everything but his mouth.” Harrelson was struggling to get up, and Deese kicked him in the thigh and he went down again, and Deese asked, “You wanna play golf in a wheelchair?”

“There’s more money in the house . . . Maybe a few thousand.”

Harrelson had dropped the fob when Deese hit him, and now Cole scooped it up and said, “Get him in the house. When we go through the door, you might hear an alarm pad start to beep. We’ll give him ten seconds to disarm it. If he doesn’t, we gotta run. Stand back, because I’ll put a bullet in his brain for our trouble and then one in Dopey’s. You don’t want to get the blood on you because of that DNA shit.” Cole doing his fright bit.

“Got it,” Deese said.

“Alarm’s turned off,” Harrelson muttered. “Don’t hurt us and I’ll get the cash. The cash we’ve got.”